One of my favourite cycling routes would take me from my place in Balestier towards Kallang Riverside Park and onwards to the Singapore Flyer. I would always take this route if I did not want a strenuous route (aka toward Punggol PCN) or if I wanted to enjoy the beautiful night view of the Singapore skyline from Marina Bay. The main reason for choosing this route was to accommodate my wife's first (real) ride on her new bike and I guess by taking a simpler route would encourage her to accompany me for future rides.
I had planned to buy her a bicycle for a very long time now. I didn't want to spend too little and end up with a bike that's fit enough for the trash bin after 5km of riding but neither did I wanna go ballistic with my budget and risk losing a huge chunk of cash if she didn't like riding at all. I spent weeks planning, shortlisting, speaking to different bike shops about the models they had to offer etc... I covered every single aspect on what the perfect balance and the perfect bike might be for her but I missed out the most crucial part. She has the gift of supernatural vision, occasionally.
The ride to Marina Bay was great but knowing that she was a new rider, I did not want to push her on longer distances and we chose to head back. On the way back, we had to cycle through the section between the Singapore Flyer and Kallang Riverside Park. The air was very still that night but I was feeling a little uneasy as I had felt my goosebumps. I did not want to bother too much on that and had chose to concentrate focusing on my wife's well being. She had been riding beside me all this while. Her pace is one level above crawling (She didn't want to try cycling faster as she was not comfortable at higher speeds yet).
The goosebump effect did not go away but in fact, it intensified! I felt a strong chill on my shoulders, neck and the back of my head. At this time, my wife turned her head slightly towards me and suddenly told me "Let's cycle faster!" and she hastened her pace. I knew something was wrong. I started chanting some prayers and we didn't stop till we got out of the park, at Crawford Street. We still didn't feel right and we headed to a nearby food centre, which had busy human traffic to calm ourselves.
She told me that during that stretch she felt uneasy, turned to look at me and saw a whitish apparition follow very closely behind me. This thing had followed us for a very long way since we had left Singapore Flyer and it only went away as we were reaching the end of the park.
Looks like I will have to arm my bikes with amulets/talismans for future rides.
